Hen With A Tie

Indonesian former Minster of Trade, Muhammad Lutfi, challenged our Singapore Ministers to prosecute the companies. We will. Even though one must wonder at the audacity of passing the buck to Singapore. Don’t forget the holding companies might be in Singapore , but the operating subsidiaries are in Indonesia. And the fires are happening IN INDONESIA. Even though the chance of Singapore stopping the fires by prosecuting the holding companies are low, we will proceed , not least because some punishment is needed. But this misses the main point Lutfi is actually making. Besides passing the buck to Singapore , he is sore that many Indonesian companies have chosen to list in Singapore instead of Indonesia. Sore that most of the wealthy Indonesia (including many of his friends) choose to live in Singapore instead of Jakarta. He is sore that Indonesian conglomerates choose to book their profits in Singapore instead of Indonesia. He posted another video blaming Singapore (Min Grace Fu was shown) for Indonesia’s stock market collapse in the last few days. He even insinuates that it is Singapore (GIC) that pushed for Indonesia to be downgraded by the MSCI to standalone market status. Ridiculous assertions of a sore loser. As usual, Indonesia officials use Singapore as the bogeyman , whenever something bad happens. When their incompetence causes haze to Singapore and Malaysia, they turn the narrative on us instead. We will not be bullied. If Singapore and Malaysia were afraid , we would have surrendered during Konfrontasi. We did not surrender then. We will not surrender now.